Passing time

Before all the stuff went down with my aunt, I stumbled across the perfect post. In fact I was editing this post in my head up until the point that I learned that she had died. And then life took over and it got shelved. But I knew that one day I would have to post it.

I had decided back in May that I absolutely needed to have an iPhone. (And when I got the call telling me that I needed to rush to the hospital, it was on my new iPhone. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) Then I started reading the rumors that a new phone would be introduced. I knew that I should wait until June 9th for the announcement of the release date of the new phone at that point. I had hoped that the date would be before my birthday but it's just as well that it wasn't. I needed to wait for my birthday loot. And I had enough to get the 16G. Thing is that I decided that sleep and comfort were more important to me. I didn't get to the Berkeley store until 7:45 even though I had been up since 6:00. I still kick myself for that decision. The guy in line in front of me got the last 16 from the store and I had to settle for an 8. I was told that I could order the 16 and wait 7 days for it or I could take the 8 and if I decided that I really wanted the 16, I could bring it back when they got more 16's and pay the 10% restocking fee.

This was not the entertaining stuff though. While in line, some homeless guy walked past. And he started singing a song about how there were no more revolutionaries in Berkeley as they had all been replaced by yuppies. Most of us in line had to laugh. That was our mistake. He then realized that he had an audience.

As he chowed down on his oatmeal in a paper cup that he had gotten from the shelter, he proceeded to share his views of the world with us. There were the evils of capitalism. Then somehow we ended up on how homosexuality was wrong. He also was kind enough to point out to us that most gay men reside in San Francisco while Berkeley is filled with lesbians. And the worst part of these lesbians? Instead of laying with a man they use "artificial insimulation" to become pregnant. And no, that was not a typo on my part. These were his exact words. I shit you not.

He then shared his belief that people needed to find religion -- instead of pirate stuff. I mean pirates as in ummm pirates. He told us that Jesus walked into the temple and told them to get that shit out of there. A young woman in line behind me had issue with his use of "Jesus" and "shit" in the same sentence. He then informed us that Jesus was a Jew. Gee. I never knew that. And then suddenly we were on the topic of Islam -- his apparent preferred religion.

I believe that it was around this point one of the guys in line asked him about his food. There was a discussion about fruit and then he suddenly exclaimed, "Look how the white devil has tried to distract me from my real point. They do that." Of course, later on he tried to clean things up by pointing out that not all white people were evil. I think this was after he said something about some blacks being hypnotized and forgetting their culture. Uh huh.

Then somehow we found ourselves back on the topic of homosexuality. Well, some of the folk in the line had had enough and were speaking back. The people near me -- as well as myself -- had decided that it was best to ignore him. If he had no active audience, he would stop and go away. I couldn't help but whisper to the folks around me my take on the lesbian comment though.

"These women he's met in Berkeley? They're not all lesbians. They just don't want to be with him."

And then there were some chuckles. Well, after the women explained to the guys that sometimes we -- women -- say stuff like that to get rid of undesirable guys. I still wonder how many of them were re-evaluating past encounters with women.

All I could think was if he was my last chance for procreation, it was time for the human race to end.

So when he got back to homosexuality, some folks decided that they had had enough. Cellphones started coming out.

"Oh! Look at the white man pulling out his phone. He's probably calling the police. Doesn't he understand? This is Berkeley."

And the guy was right. He wasn't a danger to himself or others. The cops may have asked him to move along but that would have been it. He was on a public street after all. And if the PRB and free speech are not synonymous, then I don't know what else is. And you know what? That would have been OK with me. Stuff like this? This is why I chose to live in Berkeley. I love the fact that I never know what I'll encounter when walking down the street.

And this is one of the stories that I would have shared with my aunt. Actually as it was all going down, I thought to myself, "I have to call her when she has recovered from her chemo so that I can tell her about. I know she'll appreciate it." It's part of what has made the past few weeks hard. My life is now filled with moments that I'd love to share with her but can no longer do so. I've gotten past the crying a few times a day. (Perhaps learning yesterday that my stepmother will never be coming home again has replaced that pain. But I wasn't really surprised to learn that.) And my aunt's still one of the contacts on my cellphone. I just don't have the heart to delete it quite yet. Just like her birthday is still on my Outlook calendar.

But today I'm no longer kicking myself. Today I turned in my 8G for the 16G I ordered a couple of weeks ago. Because I'm still in my return period. So yeah there was a 10% restocking fee but I got the joy of practicing with the 8G for three weeks while waiting for my 16G. And so now while avoiding certain family members like the plague, I'm also trying to remind myself to enjoy the little things in life.

Throwing rocks

So I spent a great deal of Sunday afternoon/evening dealing with my computer. I had absolutely no internet connection. Around 6, I finally decided to call Comcast after restarting my modem too many times to count. The first person I received was some guy who tried to tell me there was a wiring problem. I didn't really believe that. He then told me that techs were only available between 8 and 5. Not happy with that answer. He then said that he would send an email requesting that a tech come between 4 and 5 tomorrow. I received the ticket number. Then, because he was just repeating the same old BS, I hung up. I immediately called back. This time I got a female tech. We determined that the problem was probably my modem. Makes since as the thing is 9-10 years old. I quickly rushed out to Circuit City to buy a new one. After another 30 minutes or so on the phone, I once more had internet connectivity.

What I want to know is why the men are such idiots? Whenever I call my internet provider, the guy I get on the phone is a total bonehead. Then I call back and get a woman and we totally solve the problem. Knowing this, I should have hung up when the bonehead answered. For this reason alone, I should have run from Sports Guy. He works in IT and was always talking to me about tech stuff like I was a complete idiot. Mind you, before I went into teaching I worked for a non-profit. My primary function there was as the network administrator. And I did some updates to the webpage. Obviously I am somewhat tech savvy. Enough so that when I worked at The Death Star, the guys in IT did a no-no. They got tired of me calling to ask them to install software on this one shared computer in the department. They decided that because I was together enough in their opinion, they would give me administrator privileges on that one computer. Such a corporate no-no but they knew I wouldn't abuse the privilege.

I ended up interested in hardware in a roundabout kind of way. I was the only girl on the block growing up who had a motorized erector set as well as the Radio Shack 150-in-one electronic kit. (This was thanks to being the only child of an engineer.) From the latter, I learned how to read a schematic.

I needed to upgrade the RAM on my first computer because I wanted to do a software upgrade but there were so many types available that I didn't know what I needed. So I opened up the machine, read the schematic, and located the chips so that I could take them into the store. The silly salesperson told me that for $50 they could install the new RAM. I looked at him and said, "I removed the old chips. I think I am quite capable of installing the new chips."

After that, I regularly picked the brains of the IT guys at work when we were on break. Then I went to work for my dad. He was letting a friend, who was also retired from a utility, store computer components in the warehouse. I purchased a number of components from him for a new computer. He left me alone in a room for half an hour with the schematic. Then he came back to test it to make sure that I had made the connections correctly. I had. (He and another of my dad's friends also taught me how to run network cabling. Probably because I was one of the few people in the office who was not afraid of walking along the metal braces of the ceiling tiles in the loft area.) After that I did all of my own hardware upgrades as well as rebuilding when necessary. Until my current computer. When I priced out hardware and software, I decided that for once it was less expensive to buy what I wanted instead of building.

Emotion is my downfall. When my computer stops working, I go into a panic and stop thinking clearly. By the time I was talking to the second tech, I realized that the problem may not be the wiring but the modem instead. Turns out it was.

And now for the stream of consciousness part of this post. Because of course thinking of the idiot tech guys made me think of dating and other stuff.

I think part of the reason why I have tried to not post photos of myself on the blog is a matter of three things. (1) Repercussions from the real world. (2) The whole race thing. If I never said anything, folks would just assume I was just another white chick on the web. (3) The fact that experience has taught me that because people think that I'm attractive, or so I've been told, that I'm also dumb as bricks. I had a boyfriend when I was in law school who tried to explain to me that I would not be receiving my full pay for the summer because they have to take taxes out of the money. What the fuck?! I should have dumped his ass when he said that instead of putting up with the non-stop insults for months. And those times that he made me bleed and then thought that I was a bitch for demanding an apology. But I was in a bad place back then and had very little self-esteem when I met him. I guess he thought that he had met a woman like mom. A woman who made a lot of trips to the emergency room before she finally decided that she had had enough.

But back to the dumb thing? Women like Judy Holliday and Gracie Allen were always idols of mine. Highly intelligent women who knew how to act dumb when it was to their benefit. Because it takes a lot of skill to act dumb when you really aren't.

There are some days when I just want to smack the hell out of a man. Now I just think about it. Back then I started fighting back. And sometimes I drew blood. And I knew it wasn't right to be in a relationship with someone who made you feel that it was OK to draw blood. In anger, that is. I didn't date for two years after that asshole. There were two wonderful guys who I couldn't really appreciate after that. One is still a friend. And there were a lot more assholes. So I took another two year break from dating.

And yeah, I know that I'm still picking some real winners out there. But I'm not taking anymore breaks. Because sometimes technology can be my friend. Want to avoid a guy? Caller ID. Want to dump a guy? Text message. Need some entertainment? Craig's list ads.

But even more important was my feeling of disconnection with all of y'all. Yes, I have internet access on my cellphone but it's a pain compared to using my computer. And now that I'm no longer at the cush job at the university, they actually block stuff on the computers at work. So now I'm feeling a little more balanced. The only question now is what is the next step in my quest for global domination.